Policy Insights

In 2001, a secondary education policy debate left German society rattled. In December of that year, the OECD published its first Programme for International Student Assessment report. PISA revealed Germany, the economic engine of Europe, to be lagging behind its OECD counterparts in both performance and equality among 15-year-olds.

What are the two most important findings of your research for FamiliesAndSocieties?

by Patrick I. Dick

“Loci”? “GWAS”? “NEB”? All in a day’s work for Melinda Mills, Nicola Barban, Harold Sneider, Marcel den Hoed, and their colleagues, who recently published a ground-breaking study on the genetic dimension of human reproductive behaviour.

To reconcile work and family is to improve gender and socioeconomic equality. This means the type of intervention will be just as important as its generosity. Take cash benefits for care services. Intended to provide families with flexibility, evidence suggests they subtly incentivise families to fall back on traditional divisions of household labour. Given cash, families, especially poorer families, tend to engage in more home care for their children.

by Helga de Valk and Valeria Bordone As our societies age, adult sons and daughters must increasingly balance their own lives with the needs of their ageing parents. They must reconcile the preferences of their parents with their institutional setting—that junction between policies and cultural expectations. A quick look at our own lives, and it’s easy to see that always making the “right” decisions can quickly get complicated for anyone.

by Harald Wilkoszewski, Elke Loichinger, and Patrick I. Dick  

by Isabella Buber-Ennser and Judith Kohlenberger We knew that migrants tend to be healthier, more open and better educated than the average citizen of the country they leave behind. What we didn’t expect is that this positive selection bias would be so pronounced among the refugees arriving during the most intense months of Europe’s refugee crisis.

by Athina Vlachantoni Taking regular care of ageing parents, vulnerable siblings or infirm spouses is an increasingly common experience in our ageing societies.

by Patrick I. Dick "Simply put, the more time that fathers can spend with their babies, the better. It’s a good thing for dads, for families, and for society."